Ulster Unionist Party Leader Mike Nesbitt MLA has said that the PSNI cannot leave the assessment they have released tonight regarding potential PIRA involvement in the murder of Kevin McGuigan hanging in the public domain without further details. 

Mike Nesbitt said: 

“This is a very stark statement from the PSNI. But it asks questions as well as answering the question of PIRA involvement. The potential that members of a terrorist organisation that we had been told had decommissioned its weapons and wasn’t even supposed to be in existence could still be orchestrating murder on our streets is a very serious development. 

“This information cannot be left hanging in the public domain and we need clarification around three options that seem to exist here: the first one is that members of the PIRA carried out this murder on their own initiative; the second is that the perpetrators sought and received sanction from a higher authority; and the third option is that it was not sanctioned by actually ordered by leaders of the Republican movement. 

“Could it be that the Republican movement retained a PIRA unit with access to weapons to deal with situations that they deemed required a dip back into the old terrorist ways?

“Every politician at Stormont has signed up to going forward through purely political, non-violent means. If there is still some form of PIRA structure in existence, we need to know. 

“This statement from the PSNI raises many questions.  It is important that those questions are answered, otherwise the poison of speculation will fester and infect the political process. 

"I have already spoken to the Chief Constable about today's PSNI statement and impressed upon him the need to flesh out what they have put into the public domain. We must have further details in the immediate future as the proper political reaction will rely on the facts.”